According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Smart Connected Device Tracker, in Q4 2012 vendors shipped 367.7 million smart connected devices. The report found that as desktop PCs and portable PCs declined (-4.1% and -3.4%, respectively), the overall smart connected device space continued to surge to just over 1.2 billion shipments cumulatively in 2012. Tablet shipments experienced the largest year-over-year growth in 2012, up 78.4% over 2011, while smartphones grew 46.1% but accounted for 60.1% of all smart connected devices shipped throughout the year.
As per the report, in 2012, Samsung arose to the number one position with just over 20% share across the four device categories. Samsung shipped 250.0 million PCs, tablets, and smartphones in the past year, up 119.3% from the previous year, driven largely in part by its surge in the smartphone space. While Samsung managed to ship more smartphones and portable PCs than Apple in 2012, Apple led all in tablet shipments, was eighth in portable PC shipments, and fifth overall in desktop PC shipments.
“Smartphones and tablets are growing at a pace that PCs can’t realistically keep up with because of device prices and to some extent disposability. The average selling price (ASP) for a tablet declined 15.0% in 2012 to $461, and we expect that trend to continue in 2013. However, smartphone APSs are still lower at $408. We expect smartphones to continue to carry a shorter life cycle than PCs for the years to come based on price, use case, and overall device size,” said Ryan Reith, program manager, Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers at IDC
The number three company was China-based Lenovo with a 6.5 per cent market share in all devices, followed by US-based Hewlett-Packard (4.8 per cent) and Dell (3.2 per cent).
